Cambridge University Students Test No-One Can Hear You Scream In Space Theory

Students have invited members of the public to submit their loudest screams in order to test whether they can be heard in outer space.

The Cambridge University physics undergraduates are testing out the "in space, no-one can hear you scream" theory, made famous by Ridley Scott's Alien blockbuster.

The university's spaceflight society (CUSF) will be uploading videos of human screams into a specifically developed smartphone app, which will then be shot into space on a satellite in December.

An image taken in the stratosphere using an Android phone, from a previous CUSF experiment

Once the satellite payload, provided by Surrey University, is in orbit, the phone will play the screams in full volume, while simultaneously recording audio.

Pictures of each scream video playing against the stunning view will be relayed back to Earth, along with a sound film, which may contain the scream captured in the vacuum of space.

The students, however, are not holding their breath.

"Obviously, we’re not expecting to get much back," says physics undergraduate Edward Cunningham. "There may be some buzzing, but this is more about getting young people interested in satellites and acoustics, perhaps encouraging them to consider future study in science or engineering."

CUSF have previously shown that an Android phone works successfully as a standalone flight computer at a similar altitude to the one Felix Baumgartner recently performed his skydive from.

Members of the public can submit their scream video, uploaded video YouTube, to screaminspace.com

Each video must be at most 10 seconds long, and there will be ten winning screams which can be voted for by the public on the project’s website.

Screams must be entered before midnight on Sunday 4 November, after which the winning videos will be announced and loaded onto the phone in readiness for a launch before the end of this year.